Saturday, June 1, 2013

Thoughts on 'Before Midnight' --- Day 2/145

If you're in a marriage, you might want to be sure you see Before Midnight on one of its good days. The third in Richard Linklater's Before series and again starring Julia Delpy and Ethan Hawke, Midnight is a fluidly penetrating depiction of a mature relationship. There's no message here, just an earnest and highly successful attempt to present the dynamics of this most complicated and demanding of states: the essential privacy and unknowability of each intimate partner; the ffects of children and other life realities on initial, expansive, joyful lust; the fragile and complex chord of on-going attraction, humor, respect, resignation, fear, imagination, compromise, and other elements that hold love together - or not.

If you don't have a 'soul mate' and wish you did, here's your chance to see much of what would probably be going on if he/she had showed up. I don't remember being particularly enamored of the first two Befores but found this one to be on a higher, deeper, wider level. The writing and acting are superb. Intelligent, easy on the eyes, thoughtful viewing -- on a good day for your marriage.